


Navigations

by Mendax



Category: The Magnificent Seven (TV)
Genre: M/M, PWP
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-02
Updated: 2011-01-02
Packaged: 2017-10-14 08:34:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/147373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mendax/pseuds/Mendax





	Navigations

Chris rubbed his thumb up under the edge of Ezra’s shoulder blade, pressing into the firm muscle there and smiling as Ezra shifted sleepily under his hand to give him that little bit of extra access. Ezra was sprawled out on his stomach, head tucked into the cradle of his arms, spent and boneless. _Like a big cat_ , Chris thought. _He’d be purrin’ if he could._

Chris couldn’t seem to stop touching him. So instead of letting himself slide into sleep, he lay on his left side facing Ezra, petting and stroking the thick contours of his back, alternately digging into muscle, ghosting his hand along the smooth valley of his spine, or lightly scratching with short nails just to watch the skin twitch.

And maybe Ezra couldn’t purr, but damn if those soft, quiet hums and sighs didn’t make a man feel more like fourteen than forty. He wasn’t there yet, but he was close enough to heighten his interest in the smoothness of the skin under his fingertips, to spend a little more time on Ezra’s flanks and the deep hollow at the base of his spine, where the sheet presented an enticing barrier to the swell of that very fine bottom.

Encountering nothing but more of those contented murmurs and feeling his pulse pick up in the sensual quiet, he pushed the sheet away. He slid his hand down over the curve of Ezra’s ass and curled his fingers lightly where it joined a wide, solid thigh.

Ezra breathed a faint laugh, and when he spoke his words were sleep-muddled, his drawl slow and heavy. “Your optimism is flattering, but I’m going to be asleep in a moment.”

“Ain’t bothering you, am I? I can let you be,” Chris murmured.

“By no means.” Ezra yawned widely. “Carry on.”

Pity Ezra was so tired, because Chris was beginning to think he actually might be up for more, forty-some years and their earlier exertions notwithstanding. He resumed his ministrations, caressing the newly exposed flesh. Despite his protestations to the contrary, Ezra’s breath did not even out into sleep. Instead, the intermittent soft, pleased sounds continued, encouraging him, eventually piquing his interest into full arousal.

He edged closer, close enough to bend his head and plant a trail of kisses along Ezra’s shoulder blade, eliciting a breathy sigh. Beneath his hand, he felt the flex of Ezra’s hips as he pressed into the mattress beneath him. He continued his exploration with his mouth and fingertips until Ezra’s breath quickened and Chris felt a light sheen of sweat break out over his skin.

 _Sleep hell_ , Chris thought with a grin. His fingers slid between Ezra’s cheeks, and Ezra clenched, briefly trapping them before relaxing to release them again. Chris found that somewhat inspiring.

He lightly nipped at Ezra’s shoulder and started moving at, apparently, the same moment Ezra decided to turn to the side and face him. Chris planted his hand against that shoulder to still him, lightly rolling to cover Ezra’s body with his own, the hot length of his erection sliding between that muscular valley.

A quick jerk beneath him was all the warning he got before Ezra’s right elbow came flying up into his jaw, the rest of him flipping as quick as a cat, and the combination sending Chris flat on his ass at the foot of the bed.

He got as far as a pained, spitting mad “What the-“ before looking up and seeing the snub nose of Ezra’s derringer pointed at him, held unwaveringly in Ezra’s left hand. A distant part of his brain was calculating where it had come from — under a pillow? Damn stupid place to keep a gun with two people engaging in bed play — but the rest was reacting to the threat. He relaxed, letting his muscles find their balance, and felt his eyes narrow and a dangerous smile pull at his lips.

Only the slight drag of one eyelid betrayed that Ezra was feeling anything at all. His features were otherwise set and focused, and there was nothing of that sleepiness in his drawl left when he spoke. “Allow me to make myself clear. I will not be buggered; not even by you. Understand?”

“You gonna shoot me, Ezra?” Chris couldn’t stop the winter coldness that layered his voice with menace, not with a damn gun pointed at his head.

Ezra paused for a heartbeat. He was the one with the gun, but he was afraid: Say what you would about him, Ezra wasn’t stupid. He put the gun up. “As long as we’re clear.”

Chris probed at his molars with his tongue, making sure none felt loose. A minute ago they’d been relaxed in a sleepy, sensual haze. Now his jaw hurt like hell, Ezra had drawn on him, and the two of them were sitting in their opposite corners of the bed, angry, wary and distrustful. Chris figured _nothing_ was clear at this point.

“That ain’t what I-“ Chris winced and felt along his jaw. “Damn it, Ezra.”

“No? Then I apologize for my misapprehension,” Ezra said. But his heavy-lidded eyes were still hooded and cool.

Chris let his hand drop to the bed. He was still pissed, but this mattered. He met Ezra’s eyes evenly, letting him see whatever was there to be seen. “Listen. I wasn’t gonna.”

Ezra’s lips parted, then closed again, and he finally looked away with a little nod of his head. He twisted around, and the gun disappeared behind the headboard.

Curious and welcoming even a slight distraction, Chris moved up to check it out. There was a small holster affixed to the bed frame. You couldn’t see it unless you looked right down at it, but as he’d just witnessed, Ezra could get to it fast.

“Some people are appallingly poor losers.” Ezra offered the quiet explanation unasked. “They begin to get it into their minds that the money they wagered and were fairly relieved of earlier in the evening might be reacquired by forcing a door and issuing threats. As every man must sleep sometime, I find it best to have the power to dissuade them near to hand.”

“Not just for your bed partners then.”

Ezra winced unhappily. “I _am_ sorry, Chris.”

“I’ll live,” he said shortly. That apology was sincere, unlike Ezra’s first had been, but if anything that only made Chris feel worse. It meant Ezra, too, was aware of the uncomfortable distance between them again. How many times were they going to get close, only to tear it apart with their own mistakes and misunderstandings and have to start over? And how long before one or both of them decided it wasn’t worth the work? Chris didn’t like the twinge that thought gave him.

“...And your jaw?”

“Not bad,” Chris realized. It already hurt a hell of a lot less than it had. He must have been moving already when Ezra connected. “Think you just clipped me.”

Ezra gave another of those short little nods and seemed to not know where to look.

Chris sighed. He scooted a little closer and crooked his finger under Ezra’s chin, drawing his attention. “Ezra, it’s okay.” He was almost surprised by how much he meant it.

Ezra’s eyes flickered over his and softened. Chris wasn’t sure which of them moved first, but the kiss they met in was almost heartbreakingly gentle, a cautious first step back. When Ezra pulled him back down to lie at his side, Chris went unresisting. And now it was Ezra’s turn to pet him, with smooth and apologetic strokes of his fingers, while Chris propped himself on one elbow and continued that slow, careful kiss, hating it for being a retreat, for taking them back to a tired place they’d been too many times before.

He didn’t let himself think about it, just pulled back enough to say it. “You can do me if you want.”

Ezra’s eyes flew open and his whole body twitched in what Chris hoped was just shock, and not revulsion. “You … what?”

Chris relaxed. Surprise and confusion, yes, but something else in those wide, pale green eyes, and in the tip of a tongue that just barely darted out to wet his top lip. “You can fuck me,” he said bluntly, then flashed his best rogue’s grin. “I’ve done it before. Kinda liked it.”

There was a lot more to the story than that, but Ezra didn’t need to know everything.

He could see the misgivings, so he quickly upped the ante while he still had Ezra off balance. Hell if he was going to let them go back. Ezra had pulled a damn gun on him, and Chris was still here, in his bed. He ground his erection against Ezra’s hip, let him feel the inarguable hardness and heat of it. “I want you to.”

Ezra’s lips pressed together into an unhappy line. “This isn’t necessary,” he said quietly, and Chris knew that he wasn’t fooled; that he knew Chris was trying to prove something to the both of them.

“Ain’t none of this necessary,” he said levelly. “Doesn’t stop me wanting it.”

He’d surprised him again. Chris wished he knew what went on in Ezra’s head sometimes. Then Ezra drew his head down to kiss him, and that hateful caution was gone. Chris was rolled onto his back with Ezra over him, sliding the soft skin at the hollow of his hip along the length of Chris’s cock and using the friction to bring himself back to hardness.

There was finally some heat between them again when Ezra pulled back with apparent reluctance. “If you will excuse me for a moment,” he said, and then climbed right out of the bed and crossed the room to crouch down and open the lowest dresser drawer, seemingly looking for something.

Chris propped an arm beneath his head and reached down to stroke himself, trying to hold onto the edge of his arousal. This distance was allowing the cold ball of dread at the pit of his stomach to build. He’d told Ezra that he’d kind of liked it. Which wasn’t exactly a lie, but what he had liked had been the way it had driven away his memories — and everything else — for a brief time. Of the act itself, he remembered only pain.

 _It was a few months after Sarah and Adam. Not long after he’d finally succeeded in driving Buck away — only temporarily, as it turned out, but he hadn’t known that then. Seeking oblivion in some nameless border-town cathouse where the whiskey was cheap and cut with enough turpentine that it might just kill him. He’d been in a fight. He couldn’t remember with whom or why, but his opponent had worn a ring that had cut him just below the eye, and he hated the way the trickle of blood felt like tears on his face._

 _A man had slid up next to him at the bar, standing close enough that their arms nearly touched. Chris had been aware of him and didn’t react, waiting to find out what he wanted._

 _“They’re afraid,” the man said privately in a flatly musical accent, without introduction. “They think you’re going to hurt them. Trying to decide whether you have enough coin to make it worth it.”_

 _He knew. The whores had been eyeing him since he’d walked in, drawn close, but none had approached him. He downed another shot of the whiskey and refilled his glass. He glanced at the man next to him. A slim Mexican, cleaner than most in this place. His narrow jaw made a sharp line below lips that were full and soft as a woman’s and hard, assessing eyes. “I don’t wanna hurt anybody,” Chris told him with raw honesty, and almost winced at the gravel of his voice._

 _“No?” Those eyes, glittering and sharp as onyx, flickered over his and a smile pulled at the edge of his incongruously shapely lips. “Quizá ... maybe, instead, you want somebody to hurt you.”_

 _The whiskey in his glass looked like piss, and he had dried and congealing blood in a mocking tear-track down his cheek. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten, or slept. Sarah was dead. Sarah was.... He nodded shortly. The man slid away from his side and sauntered across the bar to the stairs that led to the rooms. A minute later, Chris pushed himself off the bar and followed him._

“Oh, my.” The breathy, warm drawl drew Chris back to the present. Ezra was gazing at him admiringly, watching the slow motion of his hand, and holding a small, dark bottle seemingly forgotten. “You do present a most beguiling picture like this.”

Chris frowned, a little disconcerted by how Ezra would talk sometimes. “What’s that?” he asked, tipping his head toward the item in question.

“It’s … ah … an oil. To make things … easier.”

Chris nodded. The Mexican had told Chris to suck him. Then he’d pried apart Chris’s cheeks, leaned down and dribbled spit between them. Chris hadn’t been able to tell as it made any difference, but he supposed it had.

Ezra sat on the edge of the bed and looked like he might say something more, so Chris reached up and grabbed the back of his neck, pulled him down into a hard, unyielding kiss. As soon as he felt Ezra give, he released him and turned over onto his stomach like Ezra had been earlier, but with one leg hitched up and fists clenched hard beneath his folded arms, where Ezra couldn’t see them.

He pretended not to hear the quiet sigh behind him, or feel the hesitation in the hand that smoothed its way down his back. He heard Ezra ease the cork from the bottle he held.

“Lie still,” Ezra murmured in a controlled voice, “Or we’re going to spill.”

That was all the warning he got before startlingly cool oil was poured into the hollow at the base of his spine. He flinched, and Ezra’s hand pressed his skin more firmly. Then that hand momentarily left him, and he heard Ezra slicking himself, felt the shift of the bed as he leaned away to set the bottle to the side. Chris’s skin prickled, then eased as Ezra lay down on his side, pressed up against him with one muscular leg draped heavily over Chris’s own. He pressed a kiss to Chris’s shoulder as his fingers dipped into the oil and made their way lower.

Chris hadn’t expected — hadn’t been ready for — this. This slow, careful approach, the petting, the advance and retreat, the circling pressure of just the pad of an oily finger, until it was more than that; a tip, retreat and advance, until it was Ezra’s whole finger, and it hadn’t hurt at all. Worse than that: far worse. He knew the kind of hurt he could bear, but he hadn’t been ready for this insidious, terrible pleasure. He was sweating and blowing like he’d run a mile, unable to stifle quiet moans, and his short, ragged nails were dug so deep into his palms he couldn’t feel it anymore. When Ezra started another retreat, he knew he couldn’t take it.

“Now, damn it,” he grated.

Ezra flinched, startled. “I, ah, I don’t think-“

Chris lifted just enough to turn and fix him with a teeth-baring glare. “Ezra,” he said, and loaded the short name with as much threat as he could manage.

Ezra opened his mouth, closed it again, and swallowed. Something that might have been sadness crossed his eyes, but Chris couldn’t tell for sure. “All right,” he said finally. “All right.”

The little oil that remained in the well of Chris’s back was gathered as much as possible, and he heard Ezra hiss in a breath as he touched himself with it again. Then he moved above Chris, between his legs, and Chris felt the blunt, smooth, slippery head of him pushing, and at first it didn’t seem possible. Then for another moment it didn’t seem any worse than Ezra’s finger had been; odd and strangely, wrongly painless.

Then he pushed forward more, and Chris thrashed against the bed, biting his arm to keep from making a sound.

Gentle fingers brushed from his temple into sweat-dampened hair. “I can-“

“Stop and I’ll shoot you,” Chris gritted.

There was a pause, and then a huff of amusement behind him. “Has anyone ever told you your pillow talk is somewhat lacking?” Chris relaxed at the teasing smile in his voice, relieved by Ezra’s ability to make these mercurial shifts. It didn’t seem so bad now, and he even shoved back a little in encouragement, surprised when it didn’t seem to make anything worse, and pleased by the sharp intake of air behind him.

Ezra moved again, the slow press and slick drag of him like nothing Chris had ever felt. He pushed forward until his hips were flush against Chris’s ass, and the breath Chris had been holding escaped in a rush. Ezra lowered himself enough to drop a fleeting kiss between Chris’s shoulder blades. His arms had a slight tremor, and Chris wondered whether it was from holding himself up, or holding himself back.

Ezra touched his forehead to Chris’s head — no weight, just contact — and when he spoke his breath swirled warmly across the back of Chris’s neck. “Are you-“

 _“Yes.”_ Chris interrupted without knowing how Ezra had intended to finish that question. He flexed his hips, grunting as the motion shifted that pressure inside him in a way that was still strange but far from unpleasant.

Ezra gasped and rocked back, the motion sending a flood of sensation seemingly from Chris’s core right out to the ends of his fingers, an odd flush of heated pleasure that he couldn’t decipher because Ezra kept moving this time, and Chris was moving with him like they always did in bed even if this was a damn sight different than anything else.

Chris’s whole world narrowed to the two of them, the air laden with their panting breath dotted by soft groans and curses, the slick of sweat across his skin, the roughness of even Ezra’s fine sheets against his trapped and urgent prick, but most of all that damned near intolerable pleasure and the way it would sometimes crest and come crashing through his whole body, leaving him gasping and wrecked in its wake.

Then Ezra’s hand was at his hip, sliding, tugging, and Ezra’s voice was almost unrecognizable, so far from its usual smooth composure, whispering, “Please,” and “I need to ...”

Chris drew his leg in, lifting to his hands and knees, Ezra moving with him so they barely broke rhythm. And now Ezra’s hands were free. To caress his back and sides and the tight muscles of his stomach, curved in as he bowed his back to meet another slow thrust. To slide down his thighs and curl around his hips, the fingers of one hand pressing in there while the other reached the heated length of Chris’s cock. To close around it all smooth and cool and god-damned perfect. He felt his balls draw up and clenched his jaw hard to keep from shouting as he spilled in wrenching, drawn-out spurts.

He was still gasping, head hung low and muscles taut, when he felt Ezra falter, felt the pulse of him. It wasn’t so different from how it felt in his hand or against his skin, those throbs of pressure. As recently familiar as the way Ezra’s voice broke saying his name.

Then there was only the stillness of the aftermath. Heavy breaths coming under control, a swallow or two to soothe a roughened throat, Ezra’s hand stroking his flank slowly with a gentle, barely-there touch. A sigh as Ezra drew back, withdrawing from his body. Awareness expanding to encompass the room, the sounds of the saloon in the last throes of the night, horses outside in the street.

Chris twisted, dropping to his back on the plush featherbed away from the wetness he’d spilled onto it. “God damn, Ezra,” he said roughly. “That was....”

“...Was what?”

Chris couldn’t identify the tone in Ezra’s voice, but he wasn’t expecting it. Was what? Jesus. Heaven with a kick of hell. Like nothing he’d felt before and almost more than he could take. “It was good,” he said finally. “Damn good.”

He saw the flash of relief and a whole lot of things fell into place that he hadn’t even been aware of. His eyes narrowed.

“Wasn’t for you though, was it? Before.” He wondered if Ezra’s experience had been anything like his own.

Ezra’s expression shut down entirely, those smooth features showing nothing. His voice was equally cool and distant, with a trace of irony. “Quite the contrary, I assure you,” he said, and shifted as if to stand.

Chris struck out with his hand and grabbed Ezra’s arm above the wrist. Gripped it hard and pulled a little. “Don’t.”

Ezra flicked a glance down to Chris’s hand. “I am only goin’ as far as the washstand.” Anger thickened his accent even if it didn’t show in his face or tone.

“Don’t,” Chris said again, low and intense, and then he let go.

Ezra’s tongue darted out to wet his lower lip. Chris saw the decision made a moment before he sighed and stretched out next to him. Chris turned onto his side to face him and took Ezra’s hand. Pressed his thumb into Ezra’s palm.

After a long moment Ezra’s fingers closed softly over his.


End file.
